Random musings from a "rabid" reader. The title comes from my admiration of John Updike and his Rabbit Angstrom series.When I read a review of a book I have not read, I only read enough to get a general idea of the content. If it sounds interesting, I make a note of the review, read the book, and only then do I go back and read the review completely. I intend these short musings to convey that spirit and idea to the readers of "RabbitReader."
--Chiron

Friday, November 29, 2013

Richard Dawkins leads the charge of the “New Atheism along
with Sam Harris, David Dennett, and the recently departed Christopher Hitchens.Hitchens was either correct in his beliefs, or he has now found out
exactly how wrong he was.

Of the three writers, Hitchens is the most erudite and
eclectic, Sam Harris tends to a shade toward pedantic and academic, Daniel
Dennett, a philosopher, is interesting and logical without being abrasive, and
Dawkins is the scientist, always piling on evidence to support his views.

Of course, Dawkins is most well-known for his 2006 New York Times bestseller, The God Delusion.In it, he outlined the scientific and
philosophical underpinnings of the New Atheism.One of
the most intriguing ideas he put forth was a scale of belief in God.The scale ran from one – absolute belief in a
Deity coupled with a refusal to consider any evidence to the contrary – to seven
– an absolute rejection of a Deity coupled with a refusal to consider any
evidence to the contrary.Dawkins places
himself at six: no evidence of a deity, but willing to consider any evidence to
the contrary.

When his autobiography, An
Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist recently came out, I couldn’t
wait to read it.Unfortunately, the book
did not meet my expectations, and I had only a mild interest in a few parts.

Dawkins begins the story with his ancestry, which included a
string of seven Anglican Vicars.He
spent his early years in Africa with his parents, who were colonial officials
posted there by the British Government.He finished his education at a private school – known as “public schools”
in England, and finished at Cambridge University.Most of these college years discuss important
members of the faculty who mentored and influenced him.But rather annoyingly, he quoted fragments of
numerous drinking songs he recalled with fondness.He then describes in great detail his
dissertation research along with – YIKES! – great gobs of math and statistics.These chapters left me in the dust.

I did find the many early pictures of Dawkins, his family,
friends, and mentors quite interesting, as was an extensive family tree.

Overall, however, I must say I was disappointed in the
story.Many pages were spent in telling
stories of his youth which were neither funny – to me – nor interesting – again
to me.I would love to come across a
review praising the book, and now that I have written my own review, I will do
just that.

Since the book ended at the first half of his life, so far,
I will have to wait for the second volume to completely judge Richard Dawkins
autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder:
The Making of a Scientist and his talents as a memoirist. 3 Stars

Book fanatics find themselves as subject to impulse buying
as any other shopper.While visiting
Blue Bicycle Books in Charleston, SC, I stumbled upon a slim volume I had been
thinking about reading recently – The speeches of Cicero, perhaps the greatest
Roman orator.I was particularly
interesting in reading “Pro A. Licinio Archia Poeta Oratio” or “The Speech on
Behalf of Archias the Poet.”

According
to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Marcus
Tullius Cicero, sometimes known as Tully,
was born 106 bce in Arpinum, Latium (now Arpino,
Italy.He died Dec. 7, 43 bce, in Formiae, Latium (now Formia).He was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar,
and writer who vainly tried to uphold republican principles in the final civil
wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. His writings
include books of rhetoric,
orations, philosophical and political treatises, and letters. He is remembered in modern times as the
greatest Roman orator and innovator of what became known as Ciceronian rhetoric.

My interest in “The Speech on Behalf of Archias” stemmed
from his defense of the value of writing, literature, and poetry.In the brief introduction to this speech, the
editor, N.H. Watts comments,

"This speech, slight and
unimportant in its occasion and its subject, has attained, by reason of an
irrelevant digression artificially, yet withal most artistically, grafted upon
it, to a fame and popularity which few of its author’s weightier and profounder
efforts have gained.For it contains
what is perhaps the finest panegyric of literature that the ancient world
offers us: a panegyric which has been quoted and admired by a long series of
writers from Quintillian, through Petrarch, until today, when it has lost none
of its luster; and which inspired a great Elizabethan scholar and gentleman to
write of poetry that it 'holdeth children from play and old men from the
chimney corner; and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind
from wickedness to virtue'” (2).

My copy, published in 1923 and reprinted in 1965, will, I
hope, add to this string of uninterrupted admiration through this humble blog.

Archias

Aulus
Licinius Archias,
was born c. 120 bce, in
Antioch,
Syria
(now Antakya, Turkey). He was an ancient
Greek poet who came to Rome,
where he was charged in 62 bce with having
illegally assumed the rights of a Roman citizen. He was defended by Cicero
before a court of inquiry.Apparently,
Archias was caught in a political struggle involving Pompeii.

I have so many wonderful passages underlined, I hardly know
which to quote, but here goes a few of my favorites:

Cicero said of himself, “I am a votary of literature, and
make the confession unashamed; (…) my devotion to letters strengthens my
oratorical powers, and these, as they are, have never failed my friends in
their hour of peril” (21).

Also, “…let me assume that entertainment is the sole end of
reading; even so, I think you would hold that no mental employment is so
broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding.Other pursuits not to all times, all ages,
all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion in old
age;this adds charm to success, and
offers a haven of consolation to failure.In the home it delights, in the world it hampers not” (25).

And, “Holy then, gentlemen, in your enlightened eyes let the
name of poet be, inviolate hitherto by the most benighted of races!(…) savage beasts have sometimes been charmed
into stillness by song” (27).

Cicero

Finally, “Many great men have been studious to leave behind
them statues and portraits, likenesses not of the soul, but of the body; and how
much more anxious should we be to bequeath an effigy of our minds and
characters, wrought and elaborated by supreme talent?” (39).

The other speeches are no less worthy of quotation –
particularly his speeches delivered after his return from exile to the Senate
and the people, the speech delivered before the College of Pontiffs, and his
response to the soothsayers.

These speeches present a gold mine of literature,
references, and threads which can be followed in many directions.5 stars!

I recently reviewed the great Alice Walker novel, Temple of my Familiar.In this novel, she mentions an African writer
Bessie Head.Most of the time, books and
authors mentioned in novels are as fictional as the rest of the story.I had never heard of Bessie, but something in
Walker’s description piqued my curiosity.I did a search and found numerous websites devoted to this important
African writer.

Bessie Head was born on July 6, 1937, in Natal.She did not know her parents.Her mother was a Scottish woman and her
father was an unknown Black South African.As a result of her mixed-race status, she suffered greatly from
discrimination by Africans.In January
1956, at age 18, Bessie received a teaching certificate. She immediately began
teaching at the Clairwood Coloured School in Durban.In June of 1958, she resigned to become a
journalist in Durban.After stints at
few newspapers and magazines, she began her own newspaper, The Citizen, which promoted Pan-African views.In 1964, she left South Africa for a teaching
job in Bechuanaland Protectorate, in a village called Serowe.In late 1965 she began writing seriously with
financial help from some writer friends.

In early 1969, she suffered a mental breakdown and was
briefly hospitalized.Surprisingly, this
setback had two helpful outcomes. First, the villagers who had resented her now
accepted her as crazy and left her alone.She became calm and creative once again.A novel, Rain Clouds was
published in New York and London, and it received excellent reviews.With encouragement from new friends, and in a
wave of creativity, she began a new novel, Maru,
which was published to rave reviews in 1971.Maru won numerous awards in
Africa and Europe.She had become
Africa’s first great woman writer.Unfortunately, she suffered another breakdown in late 1971 and was again
hospitalized.

Once on the road to recovery, she started her most difficult
book, A Question of Power. It is an
autobiographical novel, using incidents from her early life as well as her
recent nightmares. A Question of Power appeared in October 1973 to immediate praise
and acclaim.

A Question of Power is
the first of her works I found.This
horrific tale of her breakdowns, nightmares, hallucinations, hospitalization
was difficult to read, yet I found myself unable to put it aside.Over the years I have read a few novels
depicting mental illness, but Bessie Head’s work tops them all.I frequently found myself stopping,
reflecting, re-reading paragraphs, and shaking my head at the inhumanity among
members of the human race.This novel is
not for the faint of heart.

Maru on the other
hand, bears only scant comparison to Question.This award-winning novel tells a story of an
orphan, Margaret Cadmore, raised by a white Englishwoman.Margaret is lonely, and she suffers
discrimination by the dominant tribe in her village, the Botswanans, which
considers Margaret and her people, the Masarwa, as “less than human,” “unable
to think and reason,” and “so stupid the only blanket they have is to turn
their back to the fire.”

In an interview, Bessie said of Maru, “With all my South African experience, I longed to write an
enduring novel on the hideousness of racial prejudice.But I also wanted the book to be so beautiful
and so magical that I, as a writer, would long to read and re-read it”
(xii).

Some of the Botswanans feel the winds of change coming.Head wrote, “Should [Maru] bother to explain
the language of the voices of the gods who spoke of tomorrow?That they were opening doors on all sides,
for every living thing on earth, that there would be a day when everyone would
be free and no one the slave of another?” (49).

Enduring and magical are two apt words to describe this
work.Her lyrical descriptions of the
people, the village, her friends – and those who fought against her – are as
memorable as any novel I have ever read. 5 Stars

Saturday, November 02, 2013

In an exquisitely happy
coincidence, I recently purchased Dear
Life by Alice Munro, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.A representative of the Swedish Academy
praised Alice Munro’s “talent in capturing different moods of people, making
her a ‘fantastic portrayer of human beings’."This collection of stories draws a vivid
picture of the lives of ordinary people, faced with mundane situations, which
they handle with grace and aplomb.

Munro is the 12th woman to
win the prize.Some of the noted writers
who have taken this most prestigious award include, Earnest Hemingway, William
Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and Doris Lessing.Reading at least one work by each winner
makes an interesting and wide-ranging adventure in fiction.

When I first started reading
this collection, I felt a little mystified by the ordinariness of the lives she
portrayed.But once I really immersed
myself in the stories, I began to see the importance that all lives

have in teaching us about the
inner workings of the human mind.

In “Amundsen,” Vivien Hyde
has arrived at a school as a new teacher.She is self-conscious about a minor physical deformity and spends most
of her time home alone.But she attracts
the attention of the headmaster, Dr. Fox, who invites her to his home for
dinner.The two gradually develop a bond
and he asks Vivien to marry him.They
elope, and when they arrive at their destination, Fox says, “I can’t do it,” …
‘He can’t explain it.Only that it is a
mistake.”He puts her on a train for
home with these words, “Maybe someday you’ll count this as one of the luckiest
days of your life.” (63)

Vivien runs into him years
later, and he asks if she is happy.Munro
continues, “’Good for you.’It still
seemed as if we could make our way out of that crowd, that in a moment we would
be together.But just as certain that we
would carry on in the way we were going.And so we did.No breathless cry,
no hand on my shoulder when I reached the sidewalk.Just that flash I had seen in an instant,” …
“For me, I was feeling something the same as when I left Amundsen, the train
carrying me still dazed and full of disbelief.Nothing changes really about love.”Munro gives the reader powerless, helpless characters who carry on their
lives with quiet dignity.

Yet, somehow, I find these
stories anything but depressing.I find
myself cheering for these men and women, hoping beyond hope they will succeed
and triumph in the end.

I found some passages of Alice Munro’s Dear Life rather confusing, and only
after several attempts could I untangle the relationships and emotions of these
characters.One story in particular, “Gravel,”
is narrated by a young girl who suffers the loss of a sibling who drowned while
attempting to save the family dog.The
conversations between her older sister, Caro, and her step-father Neal required
a lot of extra effort.Overall, Munro is
a wonderful writer with lots of interesting characters and a fine narrative
eye.4 stars